


I'll be watching you

by kanrakuen



Category: Persona 5
Genre: M/M, Voyeurism, except it's not really an au because uh it completely fits the canon, fbi agent assigned to my laptop au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:24:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanrakuen/pseuds/kanrakuen
Summary: Shido is still suspicious of this weird kid that dared to intervene and he's determined to ruin his life. Killing him would be to harsh, Akira's not that important. Akechi gets the task to keep tabs on this kid and make sure he doesn't cause any more trouble.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So everyone's all about "The FBI agent assigned to watch me" jokes lately, and first I thought I was the only one thinking about Akeshu here, but after seeing some more people on Twitter wanting this, I decided to write it myself. This is a prologue for now because I wanted to set everything up so it fits into the canon universe. Yes, there will be smut. Yes, things will go horribly wrong. Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I really love IT people, but I had to send THE WORST KIND to neat freak Akechi, I'm sorry.

„Akira Kurusu?” 

Akechi tapped against the back of his cell phone, waiting for an elaboration. This name didn’t ring a bell at all, unlike the names he had heard before from the calm, intimidating voice on the other end of the line. Politicians usually, sometimes business men or media tycoons even; names you could give some sort of credit for at least one rotten achievement in this dog-eat-dog world.

“A troublesome kid. Like you, actually.”

The snide remark snapped straight around Akechi’s throat and made it difficult to swallow. It took all his self-control to not just click his tongue for the influential politician to hear, snap back at him or just hang up. Instead he took a deep breath and replied in the sweetest voice he could get to crawl out of his chest. He hated it. It turned his stomach upside down and made him nauseous.  But he could not let him know.

“My apologies if I ever caused any trouble, Shido-san.”

“It’s fine. Your results speak for themselves.”

“So I assume it will be the usual with this Akira Kurusu?”

“Not immediately. I want full surveillance first. Find him, dig up every dirt about him. If he’s up to something, it’s less suspicious if his life takes a bad turn slowly. Then it can just be pinned on himself for being a rowdy kid. But that’s not your concern. Your job is to watch. I’ll make sure you receive his file.”

“Underst—“

The call ended before Akechi could finish. This was new. Shido did not send him to keep tabs on somebody. He had other people for that. His role in this was a specific one and he almost felt humiliated to be tasked with watching a random high-schooler. He wondered what this boy had done, what anyone could possibly do, to spark such concern in Masayoshi Shido, rising star of Japan and future prime minister. But if he was supposed to dig up everything about him, he would find the connection to Shido in due time.

When he climbed the stairs to his apartment, he was already greeted by the threatening figures of two men in black suits. He didn’t know the men personally, but it was clear who sent them. No words, no eye contact. Gloved fingers of one of Shido’s vassals opened a combination lock on a briefcase, pulled out a thick, brown envelope and handed it silently over to Akechi, who accepted it, bowed deep before the henchmen and stayed with his head lowered until the two frames slipped past him. He hadn’t noticed the black Mercedes parked anywhere near, and when they drove away in the bulletproof vehicle, it barely made a sound. It seemed eerie and fake like a scene out of a film noir, unfitting for this neighborhood, but the people on the streets kept minding their own business as they always do in the big city, where everyone hides – or gets lost – in anonymity. Akechi’s eyes lingered a bit longer on the street, before he brushed a strand of hair behind his ear and slid his key into the door.

 

“I’m home”, he whispered into the short, empty hallway.

His flat was barely furnished. He smiled and called it minimalistic when people asked him about his life, but the truth was that it was dead and empty. There was no love in this apartment, no photos, no plants, no music. Muted colors, a bookshelf and a coffee machine instead. A sleeping sofa and a low couch table that was mainly used to fold up his clothes before bed, one chair and a matching wooden coffee table with a laptop sitting on top of it. It was necessary commodities, not home.

He kept it meticulously clean nonetheless, because if he needed anything as much as air to breathe, it was routine and control. He put his briefcase down and draped his jacket neatly over the single chair, pulled the black leather gloves off his fingers and put them on top of each other on the kitchen counter. Akechi reached for the coffee powder in the cabinet, dumped some into the machine, hit the button and mindlessly scrolled through his social media feeds while the air in his room slowly got heavy with the scent of fresh coffee. After seemingly endless minutes he poured the hot beverage into a generic, white porcelain cup, sat down and shoved his laptop away to make space for the ominous envelope. He stared at it for a moment as if letting it know what a nuisance it was, before opening it and spilling its contents on the table.

The case file “Akira Kurusu” read assault charges against the victim Masayoshi Shido and Akechi almost choked on his coffee. As if Masayoshi Shido would ever be the victim of anything. He wondered what exactly happened and how this Akira managed to piss off one of the most powerful politicians in Japan so bad that he would order a full surveillance. Unfortunately the official records didn’t help with piecing together the truth, since every written word was just what Shido wanted to be written. It said a few things about his background, but it all seemed boring and irrelevant. Lives with both parents, no siblings. Ah, honor student but a bit of an authority problem. Kicked out of school after the assault conviction and transferred to Tokyo to attend Shujin High School. He stopped to think where he had heard that name before and nodded to himself when he remembered that Sae-san, the prosecutor he often works with, had a sister attending the same high school. The photo he actually examined last. “He does look like a troublemaker”, Akechi said out loud between two sips of coffee. There was just something sharp in his features and his eyes that Akechi could not quite pinpoint. He admired it. And he hated it. “Who do you think you are, messing with the big guys? Do you think you’re something special?”, he growled at the photograph. He circled the stated address in Yongen-Jaya with a marker and fumbled for his phone again.

“Akechi speaking. Can I have someone in IT? I need a little bit of equipment.”

IT was a 20-something overweight guy with unbrushed hair driving a van. He stomped up the stairs breathing heavy and in combination with the amount of sweat creating dark circles under his armpits, Akechi deduced that he had never walked a flight of stairs before. He introduced himself with “Jo” and pressed himself past Akechi in the hallway in a way that all of his senses screamed for a shower and a new set of clothes. Or was he just mumbling "yo"? Akechi was too occupied by the smell and the dirt on his floor to think about it, and he did not want to seem like he didn't listen, so he decided that "Jo" was now this person's name and he just hoped he would never have to address him directly. Despite repeating that he just needed instructions and could set up all the equipment himself, Jo continued to drag muddy boots through his place, cluttering Akechi’s entire floor with cables and routers and recorders and Akechi admitted to himself that he actually had no idea what had to go where. He quietly watched, awestruck almost, how professional and quick Jo managed to turn his couch table into a communication intercept station. He just wished Jo had used a bit of deodorant first.

“Everything should work now, the boys covered the place good”, Jo exclaimed at some point and handed Akechi a headset. “You should have visuals and audio in every room, you can use them together or separately. There’s only one phone in there that we could tap, the rest is all hidden microphones and a lot of magic.” He wiggled his chubby fingers.

Akechi thanked Jo, asked a few questions about the interface and switching the channels and as they looked around inside the café called Leblanc, he started to feel more and more uneasy. If it was that easy to plant cameras and microphones, was his place safe? His phone calls? His chats? Not like he actually talked to people besides Shido, Sae and a few colleagues at the police station. But out of principle? Did Shido trust him enough to not have someone watch him day and night? The thought of having no privacy made his head spin and he apologized to Jo for asking him to leave all of a sudden.

“No problem, I’m done here anyway. See ya.” He took his remaining bags and boxes and left. _Please don’t see me,_ Akechi thought anxiously as he closed the door behind him.

He wasn’t ready to do this.


	2. Chapter 2

Instead of focusing on the task at hand, the young detective invested himself in cleaning his two room apartment inch by inch, thoroughly dusting even the smallest corners, running his fingertips over every bump in his wallpaper, to make sure there wasn’t any additional wiring anywhere. He ripped open his windows to release the intoxicating mixture of coffee fumes, sweat and dust and inhaled the crisp night air, and the static sound of a city that never slept gave him a few seconds of tranquility. It was almost 4 in the morning when he finally decided it was clean enough to breathe freely again, but as soon as his prepared laptop entered his field of vision again he felt his heart pound harder in his chest.

After hours of coffee and pacing through the flat like a caged animal, Akechi slumped into the cushions of his couch, dragged his hands over his face and sighed into his palms. The rising sun was slowly filling the room with warm light and illuminated the case files he had yet again spread out in front of him and he stared at the photos of the young man with the messy hair again. Hypnotizing grey eyes stared back at him and he could feel unease crawl from his stomach into every single muscle, seeping into his shaky fingertips. He didn’t think it would actually be such a big deal for him to pull this off; it was just a job like many before, and more harmless than many before too. In a world unknown by the majority of mankind, he could be whatever he wanted; he was a hero and a savior, he was a dark knight out for revenge, a bringer of justice, and yet putting on headphones and opening a camera app was more difficult than putting a bullet through a cognitive mirror image of a human being, knowing very well what that would cause to the person in the real world. But he could block out the responsibility for anything that happened after he left the Metaverse. He did not kill people. He didn’t touch them, harm them, or pry in their lives. This, though, this was personal. For someone with secrets like him it hit way too close to home, and he couldn’t stop anxiously looking around his own flat for the smallest signs of silent intruders anywhere. Was there even a point, though? Shido was way too powerful right now. Of course he knew at any given time what Akechi was doing. The only things he could not control were his thoughts and feelings, and those Akechi kept well hidden behind his professional demeanor. There was no point in resignation or hesitation. Shido’s word was law and this was his command, and the end would eventually justify the means if he could bear with being a lap dog for just a bit longer.

With newfound determination he got up and walked with swift steps towards the small bathroom to rummage for a hair tie in the drawers of the cheap chipboard shelf next to his sink. He pulled his hair out of his face and bound his hair into a small ponytail, as he always did when he was alone and needed to focus. Then he went back into the kitchen and poured himself yet another coffee; during the past hours he had lost count of how many cups he had, and it barely mattered. It wasn’t like coffee was ever keeping him awake, his spinning thoughts and nightmares took care of that and at this point clinging to his cup was more of a bad habit, a lifeline to hold on to. Back at the couch he reorganized the papers and equipment and put on the headphones, quickly adjusted the size and moved his mouse cursor to the program and, taking a deep breath, double-clicked to run it. The interface was simple, and they had labeled the different cameras very precisely. Apparently the address belonged to a small café in Yongen-Jaya called Leblanc, small and full of nooks and crannies, dusty and outdated, and switching through the different camera channels he couldn’t really find a bedroom and wondered if he got the address right. There was nothing besides the main area with a few tables and the counter, a small kitchen barely spacey enough for one person to stand in, a toilet for patrons and an attic so cluttered with boxes and trash it was hard to even make out the shape of the room. Akechi was relieved to see that they installed the camera in the toilet above the sink rather than inside the stall; there were some things he really didn’t want to see. He double-checked his papers and the date of Kurusu’s official school transfer, April 10th, and after checking the calendar realized he was a day early - or rather just in time - to be able to monitor him from the beginning. He took the headphones off and glanced at the time in the corner of his screen. It was 7:24 in the morning and the café didn’t open for another few hours, so he thought it would be best to catch at least a few hours of sleep. Akechi unplugged the headphones and turned the volume up, so any sounds from the café could wake him immediately from his usually shallow slumber. He rubbed his eyes and stretched, performed a trust fall into the cushions behind him and drifted off.

  
It was rustling of coffee beans tumbling into the grinder that woke him up way later than expected, and he could only infer from that the store must have been dead and empty all this time. Only after stretching, yawning and rubbing his eyes he heard the soft voices of a few customers, an elderly couple it seemed, and the owner of the café, a middle-age man called Sojiro Sakura, who mumbled inaudibly either into his own beard or the coffee machine. What he could clearly hear over the speakers was the TV in Leblanc, yet another news report about Shido’s rise as a politician, his spotless résumé, and his successful campaign. A landslide, they predict; the man the country deserves, they proclaim. A disgruntled sound rolled over Akechi’s tongue, full of disgust and years of pent-up anger. Half-listening to boring old people chatter he answered his mails, confirmed appointments, checked his social media pages again and caught up on the latest news, politics and gossip all the same; a bother, yet necessary to be able to interact with and impress people he admittedly didn’t care about, but he had a reputation to maintain.

Akechi was sternly mustering the contents of his fridge when he heard the wind chimes on Leblanc’s door signaling someone else had entered the scene and Sakura’s sudden “Oh right, they said it was today!” made him grab the bowl of two days old noodles and retreat back to the couch, and there he was in fact, in the flesh, the mysterious good-for-nothing Akira Kurusu! His excitement gave fairly quickly way to disappointment when he noticed how absolutely average-looking this kid was. There was nothing special about him in person whatsoever; his messy hair called for a haircut, his bad posture for a physiotherapist. The sharp eyes that were so prominent in the photos were hidden behind big hipster glasses, and those hidden under messy bangs. He didn’t talk much, and Sakura was definitely dominating the conversation, in the most condescending way possible. Nothing that Sakura and Kurusu talked about contradicted the files and the background check as they made their little round through the store and ended up in the cluttered attic of the building.

“Basically, your parents got rid of you for being a pain in the ass”, he heard Sakura say half-jokingly, but this heart-stabbing kind of humor made Akechi flinch. It was so easy to get rid of children, wasn’t it? It was so easy to push someone around when you’re an adult, because kids are weak, powerless, and their existence can strive or wither at the bidding of their parents or authorities. He listened carefully to what else Sakura had to say; this attic would be Kurusu’s quarter, he could at least give him a blanket. Akechi shook his head in disbelief and remembered that there was no place to sleep in the café. He glanced over the files again. Sakura himself owned a small house at the end of the block, ground and first floor, and he took care of a teenage girl as well, and was frequently enough checked on by the child protective services for abuse apparently, and the girl wasn’t signed up with a specific high school  either. A “special case” they called her in the report, suffering  from severe trauma after losing her mother. Akechi flinched again and shoved the files back into the envelope, forehead wrinkled, eyes tired. It was always different, yet always the same. His gaze drifted back to the attic scene before him, Kurusu now alone and in complete silence, looking like a lost cat amidst piles of probably decades-old junk. He watched Kurusu run his fingers through his dark, messy curls and sigh. He watched him drop the single bag he arrived with on the junk-littered floor and the clouds it threw up in doing so. He watched him slowly opening a cardboard box that Sakura mentioned being his belongings, and he watched him swiftly slipping out of the school uniform he was wearing and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. The box wasn’t big enough to hold much more than that. Kurusu mustered one of the shelves and the little couch, and removed a tarp that was covering what seemed to be a guest bed, the color of the wood long faded and the mattress stained.   
  
As he watched him diligently for several hours, Akechi thought that Shido must definitely have his eyes on the wrong guy; Akira Kurusu seemed to be nothing more than one of the countless children of unloving families, failed by the system, names eventually forgotten. It felt wrong to spy on him, and his head hurt thinking about Kurusu’s family situation. It reminded him of his own forcefully stolen childhood, and it was the last thing he wanted to think about right now – he wanted to keep his resentment locked up deep inside him, only to release it all at once at the bitter end.

He took the headset off and closed the laptop. Tomorrow was Sunday and according to the conversation he overheard Kurusu and Sakura would head out early in the morning to finish up the school transfer. He decided to call it a night and zap back in the next day and probably one more; if there wasn’t anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, he would just report back to Shido and hope he would trust his judgment and stop this farce. Since he had another minor assignment for the night, he put his gloves back on and glanced at his phone screen, at the red app icon flashing to the rhythm of his own heartbeat. On the way out he dumped the rest of the ramen into the trash.

Drenched in sweat and disoriented, his thoughts racing like they always did whenever he came back from a job, he woke up way too early. Akechi tumbled to the bathroom and into the shower to collect himself, like every morning, stood in front of the mirror to brush his teeth and dry his hair, his reflection in the mirror silently judging him. His phone beeped shortly and he picked it up to read the message; a brunch at the police department. He rolled his eyes and then quickly typed an answer.

“Lovely! I’ll be there shortly, see you soon and thanks for inviting me so spontaneously!”  
  
But of course he didn’t stay for long. Akechi always made sure to be seen by everybody, start up at least two topics and contribute to more than that, to never leave first, but to never stick around long enough for any conversation to get too personal, questions too nosy. A strict routine that made him look interesting and accepted, but elusive, as expected from a young celebrity. And that’s what he was first and foremost to others, a celebrity. He could read in their faces that they were not actually interested in his personality, not even the fake one he put on display, not his achievements as a detective. It was plain as day that most “colleagues” saw nothing more in him than a kid with influential connections, when all he wanted was someone to see his own effort. It was the fate of the Detective Prince; Naoto Shirogane had to face the same discrimination, even though she was, in fact, a gifted young detective. Sometimes he could even overhear people gossip about his connections to Shido, some went as far as implying Akechi just caught himself a sugar daddy. It made him empty his stomach over the restroom sink more than just once in the short time he became part of the police force. So he always got away with excuses about having to memorize his texts for the next TV broadcast, the next press conference, the next interview, having to go over case files. Today his excuse was another meeting, this time with Sae Niijima, who had messaged him while the brunch was in full swing. He casually followed the news about the train derailment on the way to meet her.

“Is it a case, Sae-san?”  
“Not quite. I want your opinion on something.”  
“Sure. Your judgment is quite often correct, though…  can we discuss this over sushi, perhaps? You are making a student work late, after all.”  
“Conveyor belt only.”

Niijima did not look at him.

He came home relatively late, and immediately turned on his laptop. It was a weird curiosity that had built up inside him all day, and even though all he saw was Akira doing mundane things in a mundane environment, like writing into a notebook, picking up the phone, eating and cleaning his dishes afterwards, Akechi felt calmer. It calmed him down to watch and not think about train accidents and political scandals, it calmed him down to see such a normal behavior of a normal person in a normal life. Akechi respectfully turned away from the screen when Kurusu got changed to go to bed, set an alert to notify him of movement inside the café and went to bed himself.  
  
His alarm went off a few minutes before his phone beeped with alerts from Leblanc, and with a cup of coffee in his hand he whispered “A good morning to you as well, Kurusu-kun”, towards his screen. As surprising as it was to see Kurusu actually get up and ready for school, it also confirmed once more that he was actually a good person. Akechi chuckled when Sakura served curry for breakfast, made a mental note to visit that café at some point in person, and got ready himself. A few days passed like this and turned into a strange routine. Get up, check on Kurusu, go to school, to the police, come back home, fast forward through recordings of the day for anything unusual. There was never anything besides Kurusu being late to school on the first day, but anyone could blame that on getting lost in the subway system when you’re fairly new in Tokyo. Apparently he also bumped heads with one of the teachers, but that, too, was a normal thing to happen in Akechi’s book, and it wasn’t like Kurusu tried to start a revolution… Shido called every day, and every day he gave a brief summary of Kurusu’s activities, and repeating over and over again that he doesn’t think Kurusu poses a threat. As Akechi got pushier in his plea to stop this, Shido got pushier in his commands as well. “It hasn’t been long enough to judge, Akechi.” turned into “Just continue until I say otherwise.” turned into “I do not remember paying you to think.” turned into “Don’t dare to cross me.” and eventually Akechi begrudgingly accepted his place, out of fear for his life, but mostly out of fear for his bigger plans to go up in flames.  
  
Before he knew it an entire week had gone by and Akechi wondered if his life had always been that uneventful; if he was always wasting his days like this, or even worse, if he took the hours spent staring at the computer screen out of the equation. He nestled himself into a blanket on the couch, with a book he meant to read for homework over the weekend, and the chatter from Leblanc was more of a background noise to him at this point that he welcomed instead of the oppressing silence that usually filled his apartment. Immersed in his studies he didn’t even notice immediately when Akira came back home. What pulled him out of his focus was a voice he didn’t recognize.   
  
“What is this place?”

A voice so young, Akechi thought it was a child, except he could not see any of the guests in Leblanc having kids. Or, now that he took a closer look, any guests left in Leblanc at all.

“Is this an abandoned house?!”  
  
Then Sojiro Sakura stomping up the stairs.

“Hey are you… I was wondering why I heard meowing! What did you bring it here for?”  

Meowing, though? Akechi did not hear a cat meow. He squinted at the screen and switched through the different cameras until he got a good angle at the small black cat with the white socks cowering on Akira’s makeshift bed.

“It doesn’t have a home”, Akira explained in a calm, empathetic voice. He hadn’t heard him talk much anyway, so he deemed his words as something kind of special. Sakura explained to him how an animal in a restaurant is a no-go, but his features grew soft quickly enough and he agreed to keep the cat around as long as the customers wouldn’t catch wind of it. Akira agreed and thanked him, and Sojiro only waved and disappeared downstairs again.

“Was this the ruler of this place? He seemed pretty understanding for someone who keeps you cramped up in this dump!”

There it was again, that unfamiliar, childish voice.

“Then again, I suppose to normal people I just sound like a meowing cat.”  
  
Akechi’s book hit the floor with a loud thump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for taking so long, I'm really not used to /writing words/ ???????? Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope I didn't disappoint delivering some quality angst.


End file.
